Bob Zeidman describes each of the parts and chapters of The Software IP Detective's Handbook to help you determine which chapters will be useful and appealing for your specific needs and interests with regard to intellectual property.

This chapter is from the book

This book crosses a number of different fields of computer science, mathematics, and law. Not all readers will want to delve into every chapter. This is the place to start, but from this point onward each reader's experience will be different. In this chapter I describe each of the parts and chapters of the book to help you determine which chapters will be useful and appealing for your specific needs and interests.

I should make clear that I am not a lawyer, have never been one, and have never even played one on TV. All of the issues I discuss in this book are my understanding based on my technical consulting and expert witness work on nearly 100 intellectual property cases to date. My consulting company, Zeidman Consulting, has been growing over the years, and now the work is split between my employees and me. When I refer in the book to my experiences, in most cases that is firsthand information, but in other cases it may be information discovered and tested by an employee and related and explained to me.

In this book I also refer to forensic analysis tools that I have used to analyze software, in particular the CodeSuite tool that is produced and offered for sale by my software company, Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering Corporation (S.A.F.E. Corporation), and can be downloaded from the company website at www.SAFE-corp.biz. The CodeSuite set of tools currently consists of the following functions: BitMatch, CodeCLOC, CodeCross, CodeDiff, and SourceDetective. Functions are being continually added and updated. Each of these functions uses one or more of the algorithms described in later chapters.

Also, the CodeMeasure program uses the CLOC method to measure software evolution, which is explained in Chapter 12. It is also produced and sold by S.A.F.E. Corporation and can be downloaded from its own site at www.CodeMeasure.com.

Table 1.1 should help you determine which chapters will be the most helpful and relevant to you. Find your occupation at the top of the table and read downward to see the chapters that will be most relevant to your background and your job.

Table 1.1. Finding Your Way through This Book

Chapter

Title

Computer scientist

Computer programmer

Manager

Lawyer

Consultant/expert witness

Software entrepreneur

Part I

Introduction

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 1

About This Book

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 2

Intellectual Property Crime

X

X

X

X

X

X

Part II

Software

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 3

Source Code

X

X

Chapter 4

Object Code and Assembly Code

X

X

Chapter 5

Scripts, Intermediate Code, Macros, and Synthesis Primitives

X

X

Part III

Intellectual Property

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 6

Copyrights

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 7

Patents

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 8

Trade Secrets

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 9

Software Forensics

X

X

X

X

X

X

Part IV

Source Code Differentiation

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 10

Theory

X

X

X

Chapter 11

Implementation

X

X

X

X

Chapter 12

Applications

X

X

X

X

X

Part V

Source Code Correlation

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 13

Plagiarism Detection

X

X

X

Chapter 14

Source Code Characterization

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 15

Theory

X

X

X

Chapter 16

Implementation

X

X

X

X

Chapter 17

Applications

X

X

X

X

X

Part VI

Object and Source/Object Code Correlation

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 18

Theory

X

X

X

Chapter 19

Implementation

X

X

X

X

Chapter 20

Applications

X

X

X

X

X

Part VII

Source Code Cross-Correlation

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 21

Theory, Implementation, Application

X

X

X

X

X

Part VIII

Detecting Software IP Theft and Infringement

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 22

Detecting Copyright Infringement

X

X

X

X

Chapter 23

Detecting Patent Infringement

X

X

X

X

Chapter 24

Detecting Trade Secret Theft

X

X

X

X

Part IX

Miscellaneous Topics

X

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 25

Implementing a Software Clean Room

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 26

Open Source Software

X

X

X

X

X

Chapter 27

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

X

X

X

X

X

Part X

Past, Present, and Future

X

X

X

X

X

Part I: Introduction

The introduction to the book is just that—an introduction, intended to give you a broad overview of the book and help you determine why you want to read it and which chapters you will find most in line with your own interests and needs. This part includes a description of the other parts and chapters in the book. It also gives information and statistics about intellectual property crime, to give you an understanding of why this book is useful and important.